All the Difference (23 page)

“Oh, no,” she said, for the second time in an hour.

She was in labor.

Molly forced herself to stand upright. The contraction had subsided enough for her to keep a straight face. Scott was staring at her, waiting for a response. He hadn't even noticed something was amiss.

“Scott. You don't love me.” The panting in her voice was going to give her away. She tried to even her breathing. “You just like the
idea
of me. Just like your mother does. You know that.”

Molly flipped open the lock on the door. “So I think we're through here. It's time for you to leave.”

Scott groaned. He sounded like a little boy who'd been told he couldn't have more candy. “Molly, I don't want to leave. Not until you agree to give me another chance. Not until you agree to let me be a part of this baby's life. Of your life.”

Molly shook her head in exasperation. She just wanted the man out of her house so she could figure out what to do next. She'd never wanted the company of her family more than she did then.

“We can talk about custody of the baby later on. Fine. There has to be a mediator present, though, and lawyers to put a plan in writing. That's the only way. I'm not having any more of these impromptu talks in my living room.”

She tried not to gasp as she spoke. “And we're not getting back together, Scott, no way, no how. Now, please, just get out of my house.”

“Molly, please.”

Another contraction had started, moving more quickly this time. Molly moved to brace herself against the wall beside her entranceway closet and pointed at the door.

“Scott, go. We'll talk after the baby's born.”

The contraction peaked now, stronger than the others, the pain vibrating from her center down her legs, up her chest, through her pelvis. She cried out against her will, and tried to fight the tears that were threatening to spill onto her face.

“Molly, what's going on? What are you doing? Talk to me, damn it!”

The next contraction started almost as soon as the pain from the other faded, its angry vise clamping down on her pelvis until it felt like there were knives fighting to leave Molly's body from
below. She doubled over as Scott tried to hold her upright by the arms. He was still talking, still begging. She moaned again in spite of herself.

“Molly, I need to be here for you. You have to let me be a part of this. I'm the father of our baby.” He was squeezing her.

Molly didn't answer him. Her knees bent suddenly with the weight of her contracting belly, but she refused to go down.

“Get out of here, Scott!” she cried. “Just go, damn it!”

No sooner had the words come out of her mouth than a furious knocking started from outside the house. The heavy door swung open, and Molly and Scott looked up in shock as in tumbled Jack, Emily, and, behind them, Jenny and Dan. Scott's hands were still clenched around Molly's upper arms, tight, holding her in place.

“What the hell is going on here?!” boomed Molly's father, his voice louder and more frightening than she'd ever heard it in her life. Emily rushed over to Molly's side as Scott let go of her and backed away. Her mother used her body as a shield to block Molly from Scott's view, while Jenny and Dan hung back in the living room, watching the scene unfold with anxious faces.

“Jack, I was just—” Scott's voice had become friendly.

“I don't care what you thought you were doing, Scott, you don't touch my daughter!” Jack took a step toward Scott, with Dan now right behind him.

Scott leaned around Emily to get Molly's attention. “Come on, Molly, don't you see? Don't let them do this. Don't let—”

A sudden contraction hit Molly with such force she couldn't breathe through it. With a scream, she collapsed onto the wood floor. She heard the gasps come from Jenny and her mother, and clutched her hard belly as if that could make this all stop.

“Get out!” she shrieked. Sweat was forming thick on her skin. “Get out!”

Scott stepped back, but didn't move beyond that.

“Make him
go
!” Molly begged. Before Scott had a chance to say another word, Jack and Dan each took him by an arm and towed him toward the door. Scott was struggling, trying to stay inside, not ready to give up whatever stake he still had there. Through a haze of tears, Molly saw Jenny's hands on Scott's back as the men forced him to the door, giving him one final shove as he went over the threshold.

When the door shut, every person in the room turned to look at Molly in apprehension. Her contraction had subsided, and for a wonderful, calm minute, she could relax against her mother's side, smiling at the sight of Dan with his arm around Jenny. But before she could take the next deep breath, she was doubled over again, panting in agony, as the four other people in her living room started scurrying around each other in confused panic.

“Oh my God, you're going to have the baby!” Jenny exclaimed. Molly watched her clap her hands in delight.

“Oh my God, you're going to have the baby?” Dan cried, looking around as if somebody forgot to tell him this was happening. “I thought we were going out for linguine!”

Molly groaned.

“Okay,” Emily said. She hugged Molly tight and whispered in her ear. “You got this, Mol. You're going to be okay.”

Molly's mother stood straight and took charge. “Jack, you go get the car.” He nodded, and the next thing Molly heard was the slamming of the door. “Jenny, you go grab Molly's overnight bag from upstairs. Molly, you do have a spare bag packed here, of course?”

She nodded. Of course she did.

“Okay, and Dan?” Dan looked back and forth between Molly and Emily in a panicked stupor. His expression was one of sheer fear. “Dan, just go sit down and take a deep breath, will you?”

“Oh, God, I think I'm going to faint,” he muttered, and collapsed onto the couch.

Jenny came running down the stairs moments later, the soles of her ballet flats slapping against the wood in their hurry. “I've got it!” she called out, jubilant, wielding the heavy bag like it was a Super Bowl trophy.

“I'm here, I'm here!” Jack threw open the front door to the house and then stood there, keys in hand, looking back and forth as if waiting for a stampede to rush his way. Dan leaped up from the couch, but stopped in his tracks.

“Holy crap, Molly,” he yelped. “Holy crap. You've got stuff leaking out of you!”

Jenny threw the stuffed bag at him and ran to help Emily pull Molly up off the floor. Molly groaned, the pain so blinding that everything in front of her eyes had gone black. She barely registered the sensation of liquid streaming down her legs, too miserable to be embarrassed, and too preoccupied to care if someone cleaned it up.

With a grunting effort, her parents and friends formed a semicircle around her, shepherding her toward the door, all of them protecting her, moving in one heaving, tumbling, warm mass. Finally, they managed to ease Molly onto the doorstep.

“You can do this, Molly!” she heard Jenny say, and she felt her friend's thin hands around her shoulders, guiding her down the stairs. Another contraction burst its way around her torso, and Molly crumbled into the car, her mother carefully easing the back door closed behind her.

“See, Molly?” she heard Emily say, just as the lock clicked. As soon as they were all buckled up, Jack jammed his foot onto the accelerator. The tires of the car squealed and they jerked with a start out of the parking spot and onto the road. Molly pressed her head against the window, the glass cool against her moist forehead.

Emily couldn't help but get in one last word. “I
told
you it was a bad idea to come into the city
alone!”

October

Yes

T
he newborn's cry rose with swift crescendo, sailing through the room with the velocity and volume of a rocket. Molly stood at the foot of the bed holding her, her eyes half-closed, rocking back and forth in a stupor that felt close to sleep, but not nearly close enough. Scott lay still, holding a pillow over his face to shield his eyes from the slight sliver of hallway light that seeped in around the edge of the unlatched door.

The baby had been crying for twenty minutes, and nothing Molly had done would calm her down. She'd tried a diaper change, an attempt at feeding, another feeding, even dancing with her in the dark, and yet little Dylan Sullivan Berkus still lay draped over her shoulder, her perfect mouth open in an indignant wail. Molly's eyes were wet with exhaustion. She hadn't yet needed the deluxe video monitor Monica had gotten them, because Dylan was always with Molly at night, in her arms, wide awake.

Molly bounced their daughter, making
shush
ing noises. She wondered if she should try feeding her again.

A sigh, deep and rumbling, came floating under the current of the baby's noise. Scott, still huddled under the warm, wrinkled bedcovers, rubbed his hands over his face and his hair with a tense movement.

Dylan, her body rigid now with effort, continued to wail.

Molly knew the baby would cry even louder in Scott's arms. She wanted her mother, and only her mother would do, even when Molly's efforts didn't seem to be good enough. But Scott—Scott, who had to work tomorrow, who hated his inability to quiet the baby down, who couldn't handle not being able to
fix
the noise—Scott got to lie there, waving the white flag of a person begging for an excuse to surrender. In the quiet light from the door, Scott rolled over to face the wall. He positioned the pillow over his ear with an elbow and sighed again, the sound a frustrated groan of impatience.

“Just get her out of here, will you, Molly?”

Molly sat in the cold living room in her pajamas, having padded down the stairs in her bare feet with the fussing baby. Dylan was still crying, but the sound was softer now, with stretches of silence in between each rasping plea, as if she were waiting, listening for something that would break into the peace.

Molly and Scott were barely speaking anymore, other than to shout at each other in the middle of the night when Dylan started crying and Molly couldn't quiet her down. And it was always Molly to hold her, to comfort her, to go to her bassinet and change the diaper. She was breastfeeding every two hours.
Night was no different than day anymore, there was no beginning or end. It was just feedings and diapers, feedings and diapers, on a constant rotation of exhaustion and nipples that bled, and lumpy, hard knots in her engorged breasts that made her skin stretch until it shone. There was no sleep, because in between the feedings and diapers, the exhaustion and the pain, there were the tears. There were so many tears. Time held no meaning, because it was Molly, always Molly, to be the one to open her eyes and roll her body, still bruised and sore from childbirth, out of bed to reach for the baby. She'd ball up the diaper, change the soiled onesie, and pat the warm newborn on her tiny, frail back until, finally, she burped the extra air from her lungs, over and over again, while Scott snored.

He got so much sleep, Molly thought. He muttered through dreams, he rolled over to take up her side of the bed when she got out. While she hunched over their newborn, her breasts exposed and leaking, her skin clammy with postpartum night sweats, Scott stayed warm and asleep. Molly only knew it was a weekend when Scott emerged from the bedroom mid-morning in track pants instead of a business suit. How nice it must be, Molly thought, to know the difference between one day and the next.

She was sitting in the glider late the next afternoon, still wearing the same crumpled pajamas from the night before. They were damp and limp now, hanging against the new folds in her body with alarming conformity while the baby nursed. The past few weeks had brought her a new person to love—a person who looked like her and stared at her and draped herself against her mother's body like she was a blanket protecting her from the
cold—but also physical pain, and the mind-numbing delirium of hours of wakefulness, and a partner who might as well have been just a craigslist roommate perpetually behind on his rent checks. She'd never felt so happy and miserable in her entire life.

Scott entered the room with a thud as the door knocked against the wall, startling the baby from her latch. He stood in the doorway, wearing a Penn State T-shirt and a pair of shiny basketball shorts slung low over his narrow hips. He rarely entered the nursery, and now hovered at the threshold, clearly uncomfortable.

“So, I had an absolute shit day. I was going to meet up with the guys for some pickup ball at the gym, blow off some steam. You don't mind, right?”

Molly noticed Scott was already wearing his new sneakers, tamping down the deep pile of the cream carpet. Her fiancé probably owned more pairs of shoes than she had clean underwear. She swallowed hard and readjusted their daughter against her chest.

“No, go ahead. It's not like you can feed her, anyway.”

“Yeah, that's what I figured. I'll be home around ten thirty or so, unless the boys want to grab a beer.”

“Is Dan meeting up with you?”

“Uh, no.” Scott shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “He hasn't shown up to play since, you know.” He cleared his throat. “So.”

Scott moved across the carpet and planted a wet kiss on Molly's lips. He patted Dylan on her back with two hesitant movements, as if afraid she'd notice him.

“Do you need anything?”

Molly hesitated. They were surrounded by drawers stuffed
with baby clothes, a closet of designer crib sheets, expensive creams to help heal her stretch marks. “No, I'm good, thanks. I'm going to grab a shower and something to eat after I get her down.”

Scott stayed silent for a moment, fidgeting. “Should I not play tonight, then?” His eyes shifted. “So I can stay here with you, and like, babysit?”

“Scott, go. I could use the quiet.”

“Thanks, Mol. That's great.” He spoke over his shoulder as he strode down the short hallway. “But I'll be up with you tomorrow morning. There'll be juice beside the bed and breakfast on the table when you wake up.”

As Scott skipped down the stairs, his heavy shoes landing with a thud on each step, Molly took a sip of the water she kept in the nursery. She knew that Scott would go out that night after his games, drink from too many pitchers of watered-down Bud Light, and be so sick and stinking of buffalo wings the next day he would barely get up in time for work. There would be no waffles waiting for her, no newspaper at the ready on the kitchen island.

Molly stroked the soft auburn hair of the baby in her arms and felt some of the tension seep out of her body. It wasn't as if she expected Scott to wait on her. She was used to handling her responsibilities by herself. But his hurried promises—of breakfast tomorrow, or a weekend where he'd wash and fold all the laundry—just disappointed her when they didn't come to fruition. They were a reminder of what it could be like, to live in this house, to be a proper family, and that was something she couldn't dare to think about. She didn't need the
acknowledgment of what was missing in her life. She just needed to live it as it was.

They still hadn't set a date for their wedding. In a surprising move, Scott had changed his mind and wanted to move up the date, but Molly was the one who held him off this time, saying they should wait. She was too tired to plan anything beyond what she was doing right at that moment. She was beginning to ask herself, though, how something that was supposed to be so exciting for both of them had turned into an inconvenience. Molly wondered at what point love had gotten pushed to the bottom of the to-do list.

Through the softly curtained panes of glass beside her she could see the brilliant oranges and reds of a fully leaved oak tree waving in a small rainstorm. The window was cracked open to the wet fall air, and Molly breathed in the smells of autumn in the city: a food truck on the corner selling hot coffee, the crisp leaves starting to break down under the feet of passing neighbors, and from somewhere, smoke curling from a fireplace. The setting sun broke through some dark clouds to shine across the city, peeking around the corners of buildings and bouncing off of the metal tags of the dogs that trotted happily through the puddles with their owners after work, reminding the world that the day was not over quite yet. Inside her house, inside this room, Molly felt the quiet settle her nerves. She leaned back in the chair, listening to the sounds of the street below, and felt the slight weight of her daughter, warm in her arms.

She gazed down at Dylan, who had fallen asleep at Molly's breast, her mouth still open, her hand resting against the swell of Molly's skin. She felt her heart rise in her throat. She ran her thumb across the baby's soft cheek and smiled in the stillness
when she saw the tiny tongue move against it. She played with the thin nails that wrapped over the ends of her daughter's tiny fingers, nails so fragile and new Molly hadn't been able to cut them yet for fear of hurting her. She never wanted to hurt her. She wanted to protect this child forever from all the pain in the world, from the hurt that people could hurl at each other. Dylan had already heard yelling, and bad names, and frustration, and Molly wished she could take it all back, erase it, go into her precious growing brain and make it clean again. Her daughter was so new to the world. She needed to see the good in it before she had to experience the bad. Molly was already not living up to the standard she had set out to uphold.

Molly took in the sight of the miniature person she held in her arms. She wondered how her ears could have been so flawlessly formed, with their folds and dips, how her eyes knew to find hers as soon as they opened, seeking out her mother's face and voice and arms. From the moment Molly had placed her hands on her daughter's body that first evening, had picked her up to bring her to her chest, she'd wondered how she could ever have doubted how good life could be with her here. Because she was here, outside of her, moving and breathing and existing because of Molly, and in spite of Molly. Molly didn't understand why she'd thought she wasn't ready for this. For now, in the soft light of the evening, in the quiet of the house, with just the two of them, it felt like she'd loved this baby her entire life. She just hadn't known the strength of that love until she got the chance to meet her. And here she was.

Molly gently burped her sleepy daughter before laying her in the crib and padded out of her room, patting her waist to make sure the monitor was hooked to the band of her maternity
sweatpants. She probably had about forty-five minutes before the little one woke up again. Molly moved through the house, picking up dirty burp cloths, stacking magazines on the coffee table, throwing out used breast pads. The pillows on the couch got fluffed. She swept the smallest speck of dust out of a corner. Molly wanted to keep busy so she wouldn't think. She needed to keep busy so the house, and everyone in it, wouldn't fall apart. She went into the kitchen to rinse out the suction cups of the breast pump and place Scott's dirty dishes in the dishwasher. She ran through the checklist in her head, tallying an ever-growing number of tasks. There was so much to do.